askchapo

Although they are a very humanistic investor, and treats the global south with a great deal more respect than the Core, they are actively exploiting unequal exchange, inter-imperialist multipolar competition, and Imperialist profits. Don’t get me wrong, they have a very different way of going about it, and are far more forgiving, due to their socialist government having some guardrails, But such things are taking place. China is a far better alternative, and gives a better deal, but that doesn’t mean that capital extraction does not occur.

Continuing from previous reply... Now that China has intermediated the value flow of imperialist exploitation, they are capable of skimming some of that value for themselves and deploying it according to their strategic aims. And guess what we see - China creating alternative financial structures within the world system of capitalism. Where do we think China got that money from? I would bet dollars to donuts that we would see a direct line between China's intermediation of imperial value flows and the lending capacity of China's alternative global financial institutions. So with the capitalists own money, that would have 100% gone straight to London, now a portion goes to Beijing. The money in London that went to maintaining imperial tribute states now in Beijing is going to the development of projects that produce slightly more autonomy and independence for those same tribute states. Here we see another just absolutely gorgeous example of the Chinese engaging in dialectics. They use the imperialists' own incentives against them not only to enrich themselves but to build the momentum that will undermine the imperialists power with their own structures.

You decry the achievements of socialism to establish actual anti imperialist movements and nations just because it was violent? Vietnam? Angola? Algeria? Nicaragua? Cuba? Not what we needed?

Of course I don't decry them. I am saying that being a besieged socialist nation is not conducive to the liberation of a people. Cuba's revolution led to a shining example of what is possible, but it is unquestionable that the Cuban people suffer immensely because of their status as a besieged state. It is simply not enough to win militarily. As we saw with Yugoslavia, the USA is not too worried about the small states, especially the ones they can besiege, because once the regional hegemon is gone, they'll just go carpet bomb the smaller projects. The smaller projects, right now, are all living in a state of suspended animation while the conflict between the imperialists and the anti-imperialists plays out. If China falls, nearly every small state that is socialist will fall within 2 generations. Idealistically, I love those small projects and they contribute in their ways. But materially, I cannot say that any one of these projects was strictly historically necessary for the eventual liberation of humanity. The USSR was and China is the only project with the necessary conditions to produce outcomes that will lead to the controlled collapse of imperialism. We learned valuable lessons from all the other projects, and without China we would be drawing from those lessons while we try to find another project to work on. But we would go through a very bloody and difficult era were China to fall at this time.

Just because they dared to build something new, dared to not capitulate until corrupted from within, doesn’t mean that was a failure.

That it was corrupted from within is literally exactly the defining characteristic of it being a failure. Don't be an idealist.

This is not just revisionist but highly chauvinist, defeatist, and capitulatory. I suggest you retract that statement now, as maybe you just said it out of haste.

You've got so much good analysis, but you're still captured by idealism. I am not a defeatist. I am a Marxist. Materially, the USSR failed. It's failure was solidified the minute Kruschev took power, but that process was clearly present for many years and Stalin failed to identify the means to address it permanently. Your statement would be like if you built a tower out of legos and then it fell and I said your build process failed and you argued that your build was fine it was gravity that was the problem. The USSR was a failed socialist experiment explicitly because it could not maintain the revolution. Mao's approach to the maintenance of the revolution explicitly took this into account, as a materialist analysis rightly should. Mao's revolution also had processes that threatened the socialist project in China but so far it seems the party's solutions to managing those processes has prevented the project from failing.

Don't misunderstand me. I'm not saying the USSR failed at every objective and showed us that socialism is a bad idea. On the contrary, it showed us just how amazing and successful socialism can be. But it still failed. That's why it's not here anymore.

thats what im trying to say, its become china’s self interest to maintain that system, as it is now a part of it.

Or, from another perspective, it has ALWAYS been in China's self-interest to maintain the system because it needed to become a part of it in order to survive the conditions of imperialism. Essentially we are having the 2-into-1 vs 1-into-2 debate about dialectics. From one formulation capitalism and socialism are thesis and anti-thesis and when they come into conflict they interact and produce the synthesis. From another formulation socialism emerges from capitalism and both contribute to the unity that is human society.

It wants to throw off US hegemony, but simply to throw off the hegemon. You think capitalism has somehow changed nature? That Imperialism is nice now? It is simply because China has become a part of it. The semi-periphery is now trying to replace the core. This is a process of systems.

The question is whether or not this is the historically necessary process. Is there another way? Could China and the rest of the world fight off the imperialists who invade whenever a country nationalizes its resources? Could China chauvinistically break every country's relationship with the imperialist? Could China offer an alternative while the imperialists collectively punish nations for choosing to decouple from imperialist flows?

I agree with you about where the world needs to go, but when I look at what China is doing, I see a nation-state that is address the state of the world as it is and dialectically moving to where I think it needs to go. You seem to see an imperialist.